A Study on the Mismatch between the Spoken and Written of Chinese Language and the Use of the Phonetic Loans

중국의 언문(言文) 부조화와 음역어의 활용

This study is about the mismatch between the spoken and written language of Chinese language. In the past, many Chinese intellectuals insisted on abolishing Chinese characters, since they are too difficult for common people to learn, write and remember. However, Chinese characters are still kept as the only formal letter in China, and probably, Chinese characters will not be abolished in the future. On the other hand, problematic situations often happen, because Chinese characters are used to transcribe foreign sounds such as phonetic symbols, even though they are ideograms. The most important part of the characters as an ideogram is the meaning, but sometimes the meaning is ignored for the phonetic representation of foreign sounds. Chinese phonetic loans show this situation well. Therefore, this study discusses various types of Chinese phonetic loans, the problems of variations, and the solution to overcome the problems.